Rescuing Is Often Harming: 03-05-2026

1. Don’t rescue people when you can offer them a job or training for a job.
2. Don’t rescue people when you have the option to help them to help themselves.
3. Don’t rescue people; refer them to people who will teach them to help themselves.
4. Rescuing people often leads to dependence, discouragement, failure to try, laziness, and quitting.
5. Rescuing people often teaches them to believe in a self-fulfilling prophecy that they cannot succeed on their own because they are defective or inferior.
6. Parents must help their children to help themselves, not rescue or do for them, when their children can learn to do for themselves. This self-help training starts with simple things and gradually progresses to more complex ones.